Continued advances in computer processor technology have led to not only increased performance, but also increased performance expectations by the users of such computer equipment. These increased user expectations extend not only to the computer equipment, but also to the applications and operating systems installed on the computer equipment. The industry has responded by creating applications and operating systems that take full advantage of these performance enhancements. However, as additional functionality was added, these applications generally became more complex, increasing the likelihood of the user seeking help and errors occurring. In response, developers added additional error messages and dialog boxes and other windows (messages/windows) in an effort to help the user and also to notify the user that an error had occurred or that more information is needed, etc.
As programs and operating systems evolved, these error messages and dialog boxes often became irrelevant and unintelligible to the average user. In addition, an application working on one version of an operating system often would produce unintelligible messages on an upgraded version of the operating system. As a result, both the error messages and the dialog boxes often ended up irritating and confusing the user. Many users provided comments and other feedback to the developer or a system administrator about these messages/windows in the hope that this information would be used to fix the problems in the application. However, quite often, this feedback was of no use to the developer/administrator as the developer/administrator did not know which message/window about which the user was commenting or the sequence of events that led the user to see the message/window.
Recently, some industry members began placing buttons within the error messages that allow the user to provide feedback for that particular error message by clicking on the button. When the button is pressed, the user is provided a dialog box in which to enter comments. The comments are then sent to the developer or administrator along with an identification of the particular error message on which the user is commenting. These buttons require the application developer to add additional code to the core software for each error message on which the developer wants feedback. In view of the number of error messages that may occur, the amount of feedback code becomes significant.
While this approach provides advantages over the prior methods of providing user feedback, the inability of this approach to support existing applications and the effort of coding and debugging the required messages/windows to provide this functionality has become apparent. In order for this approach to work for an existing application, the application must be upgraded with the additional code to add the buttons. If the developer misses putting a button on an error message, there is often no way to know which error message is being commented on by the user. As a result of these problems, developers are not getting valuable feedback that would allow them to fix problems in the code.